CSPI Finds a Troubling Decline in Foodborne Outbreak Investigations by State Health Officials
Source: Center for Science in the Public Interest
In a troubling trend, state health departments completed fewer foodborne outbreak investigations in 2007 than in the previous decade, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
“The decline in fully-investigated outbreaks could reflect a serious gap in state public health spending,” said CSPI food safety director Caroline Smith DeWaal. “Fewer outbreaks were fully investigated by state public health departments in 2007 than in any of the previous 10 years—and a smaller percentage of outbreaks were fully characterized than in any of the previous 7 years.”
The trend showed up in the latest Outbreak Alert! report by CSPI. It found that states reported 33 percent fewer fully investigated outbreaks to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2007 than in 2002. This doesn’t mean that outbreaks aren’t occurring, DeWaal stressed. Nearly 1,100 outbreaks were reported in 2007 to CDC, but in only 378 cases did states identify both a food and the pathogen (the mark of a complete investigation).
Outbreaks are first investigated at the local and state level. To provide the most useful data for controlling food safety problems, those investigators need to identify both the pathogen and the specific food responsible for the outbreak, and then state departments of health need to report the outbreaks to CDC. Fewer completed investigations mean that less information is available to the CDC and other federal health agencies—affecting their ability to identify problems in the food safety system or issue recalls to protect the public.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, December 26th, 2009 at 2:17 am and is filed under Diseases and conditions, Food and agriculture, Government and politics, Health and healthcare.
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